How to Justify the Cost of Prepping

Prepping can be quite expensive. If you choose to build up a one year supply of emergency food, emergency first aid equipment, tools, etc., you can easily spend thousands of dollars over time. In fact, it would not be hard to spend more than $10,000 on prepping supplies over a period of years as you keep gathering “must have” and “good to have” items on your prepping list.

Here are some tips to help you (and your loved ones) justify the investment in prepping supplies and education. They will give you ammunition in your discussions with people who just don’t understand why you are wasting money on preparing for future disasters.

Tip 1: Compare Prepping to Insurance

You buy insurance to cover you in case of emergency. You probably have car insurance, homeowners or renters insurance, health insurance and life insurance. If you have a business, you probably have a few other types of insurance.

Some of the insurances are mandatory by law (like car insurance) and some are required by your lender (like homeowner’s insurance and car insurance.) Others you choose to get to protect yourself against any sort of future issue that may arise.

If you are like most people, you go years without any claims against any of your insurance policies. I know I’ve had car insurance for over 30 years with no claims. I’ve had homeowner’s insurance for over 20 years with no claims. And on and on.

Needless to say, lots of money was invested (and will still be invested) to protect me just in case something bad happens.

Well, prepping is just like insurance – but even better.

Your extra food purchases protect you against future price inflation of food and if you hit hard times of any time (job loss, disaster, etc.), you have food that you can eat. In fact, unlike other insurances, you are guaranteed to get 100% of your food insurance investment back as long as you eat it before it expires.

Your investment in tools and other supplies also gives you physical things for your money. You can use your tools when you need them. And you can even sell them if you decide at some future time you no longer need them. (And if you are like most handy people, you probably would buy many of these tools anyways in case you needed them for a future home repair project.)

In fact, the only area where you may not make use of a prepper type investment is if you purchase medicines that you don’t need before their expiration date.

Tip 2: Compare Prepping to Education

People invest huge sums of money in education and at least lately, that investment has been showing a poor return for most folks. When employment improves, that will reverse itself somewhat but for many people, they need to work for several years to recover the cost of their education.

But very few people will tell a college student or a trade school student that the investment in education is wasted. People can see the future value of the investment.

Prepping is also a current expense that delivers future value. As stated in tip 1, you can utilize just about everything you purchase as a prepper. Like an eduction, you make an investment today that pays off in the future.

And since this section is on education, you can also look at the value of any skills you learn as a prepper.

For instance, if you invest in a good first aid course and review periodically, this education could literally save someone’s life. I’d call the value of that education priceless.

In other instances, you may take courses in crafts and home repair skills and mechanical skills. This may be knowledge that you don’t apply directly to any money recovering situation but having hobbies that you enjoy pay off in happiness dividends. And having knowledge of basic repair skills will let you know how to talk to a contractor if you don’t do the work yourself. And this can save you big money.

Tip 3: Compare Prepping to Investment

There are many folks who invest. The stock market, rental houses, precious metals, collectibles, etc. are all places where people park their cash hoping for a future return.

As we’ve seen time and again, future return is not guaranteed. If your timing is good, you can cash out of your investments at a market peak. If your timing is bad because of some need (medical expense, retirement, etc.), you could be forced to cash out at a market low and lose a significant portion of your original investment.

All of that is a fancy way to say that any investment carries risk – sometimes substantial risk.

Investment in prepper supplies and knowledge, as we discussed above, gives value back when you use the supplies/knowledge.

This doesn’t make it a superior investment. But it is certainly a very low risk investment.

As you can see, there are many ways to look at your investment in prepping supplies and education and justify the expense to others (if you ever feel that is necessary.)

There are many others. Feel free to share your own thoughts on how you justify your prepper investments in the comments below.

And for those working on their prepper education, here is a great selection of books that you might find helpful.